You’re all mine.
40
SINN'OUS
H-Wing, a place where everyone tiptoes and no one lingers. Even Sinn'ous hesitates to enter. This whole Wing is like a segregated prison. A whole other world run by the Russian mafia. If you’re not in their mafia, associated with it or one of their rent boys, you are not welcome.
So the fact that Sinn'ous walks in and isn’t immediately swarmed says a lot about his reputation, and that of his brother’s reputation. They don’t know who SKhorpion is or how Sinn'ous knows SK. They just know that he does, and if they don’t want to be on the business end of one of SK’s knives they will grant leniency to Sinn'ous.
Using this leniency he weaves his way through the thick of Russians and towards the back end of the ground floor. The third cell from the stairs is where he’ll find Matvey, their local tattoo artist.
Sinn'ous is here first thing after their cells opened, knowing that Matvey uses this time to organise his day and sketch. He never goes to breakfast. It’s not hard to learn everyone’s routine in here, considering they don’t have many options to add variations to their schedules. But Matvey is even easier, he has OCPD and organises his day hour-by-hour, for every single day, never deviating from his set schedule. Which pretty much consists of obsessing over every detail of his artwork, spending all his time in his cell drawing, and redrawing art. A couple hours in the yard. Lunch and dinner in the cafeteria. Every odd day is spent in I-Wing tattooing inmates and guards. And commissary on Tuesdays. If it’s not open he will either not gountil next week, or someone else will pick up stuff for him another day. Making tracking him down the work of a moment.
Where one cupboard should be is a small desk and chair, Matvey is hunched over a sketch book, pen working the page. Both cupboards are shoved up against the opposite wall, by the foot of the second bunk. And the entire cell is a war zone, scrunched papers strewn all over the floor, under and on both bunks, like Matvey threw them carelessly over his shoulder. Tucked under the sheet of that second bunk is a slim sleeping form, scruffy blond hair peeking from the covers, amidst his bed companions of scrunched papers.
Sinn'ous clears his throat to announce his presence, addressing Matvey. “Do you have an open spot today?”
Matvey glares at his work, rips the page out, scrunches it into a ball, and tosses it behind him. He faces Sinn'ous, then seems to come out of whatever zone he’d been in huddled over his work. His nose scrunching up at the papers, as if he blames someone else for the mess.
“I do.” He scoops a metal bin in arm, and starts frantically collecting the balls of paper. “Give me half an hour and I’ll be in the usual place.”
Sinn'ous leaves on that, and weaves his way back to the corridor and on to the cafeteria to collect Izz. He’s at the doors when Rogers stops him. Stepping in to tell him the results from the blood tests came back and they’re clean, no STIs or any other issues aside from a low iron count for one of the samples. Which isn’t important, so Sinn'ous isn’t sure why Rogers felt the need to add the last part.
~~~
“You sure you still want to do this?” Sinn'ous asks an actual question because for the first time he doesn’t know the answerand he finds himself anxious for one. He needs to know that Izz is doing this because he wants to, not out of obligation. He needs to feel the devotion in the boy, the willingness to do whatever Sinn'ous wants of him.
Will he still make the boy do it? Yes. He will simply manipulate and secretly coerce to achieve the desired outcome. But to have Izz enthusiastically jump when Sinn'ous tells him to. Now that will be a power trip to feed his soul.
He’s leaning back on the corridor wall outside the cafeteria, painkillers in one palm and bottled water in the other. And Izz’s standing in front of him bright and beaming, trying to hide his smile behind the guise of rubbing his mouth.
Sinn'ous passes over the miniature bottled water, and the two pills cradled in his palm. Only pain killers this time, no more STI meds. He doesn’t demand Izz take them, giving the illusion of consent. And should the boy refuse, Sinn'ous is not above shoving him back against the wall, prying open his jaw, and two finger pushing the pills down the back of his throat.
Izz gives them a look of mild confusion clustered in a swirl of other emotions, then it shifts to understanding. In the end he dips his chin and reaches for them without protest.
“The pain’s not so bad,” Izz murmurs, gathering the medication, and twisting the bottle’s lid off.
The obedience is an intoxication Sinn'ous never knew he craved. It has him digging his short nails into the palm of his hand, drinking in the licks of pain, in an attempt to starve off the animalistic desire to throw the boy to the ground and claim him right here in the corridors.
He remains steady, his expression blank and unreadable. Not that he expects the boy to be able to read facial cues.
Sinn'ous walks ahead knowing Izz will come. Such a short amount of time and the boy is already bending to Sinn'ous’s every whim.
Satan, you chose the right prey for me.
He’s never questioned Satan and this right here is the reason why. Satan knows what Sinn'ous needs before he himself knows. Providing everything he could ever want. He hadn’t known why he was sent to prison, now he does. It was all Satan’s doing to lead him to Izz.
The corridors are stuffed by grey-clad men and the occasional colour contrast of blue or black or a flash of a guard’s uniform. A clumping of herd animals and pack creatures. Each group eyeing the next in a way that screams coiled violence. One wrong shift and something will snap, sending the men careening together in a collision of fists and fury.
I-Wingon the other hand is desolate. The door left open by a guard on Alexiel’s payroll. A ghost of a Wing that puts Sinn'ous on edge. Like he has said, he would rather walk into a room of men fucking than a room empty of anything, living or dead. There is nothing here to distract from thenothingness.Even speaking to Satan doesn’t take away from the silence. Shoes slapping over the cold concrete aside, the place is quieter than a graveyard. In fact he would prefer to be in a graveyard.
He has never done well alone in unknown environments, where he isn’t in control of what might come. Of who might show up.
He forcibly shakes off the dragging weight of memories long since buried. Why they refuse to lay to rest and insist on trying to dig themselves free is something he can’t work out. It’s disconcerting, and shaking his controlled grip on himself.
The cell they come to is as plain and unimaginative as the rest of them. Empty. Cold. White. Nothing to redden up the place. No splash of blood to liven things. The one-prisoner cell has a generic smell, a plain bunk, a free-floating chair same as in Matvey’s cell, and a skeleton of a short cupboard with two boxes containing a collection of little glass ink bottles. A prison madetattoo machine is set up and ready for use. Only thing missing is the artist who is late. Sinn'ous doesn’t like when people run late, and usually would rectify it with a permanent solution. But he resists the urge, he wants Izz inked, and killing Matvey would do nothing but screw with Sinn'ous’s plans.
“Where are we?” Izz whispers at Sinn'ous’s back, body in close enough for his heat to be felt.
